SearchPalette

TDX_SearchPalette #

Adds a search field to TouchDesigner's palette browser, so palette components can be found by typing their name. It is based on Yea Chen's TD-SearchPalette.

The component installs itself into the palette on project start while Auto Install is on (the toggle roams with your config), and can be installed or removed at any time with the Install / Uninstall pulses on its parameters.

Search hotkey #

ctrl+shift+f (cmd+shift+f on macOS) brings TD's own palette tab to the front and focuses the search field, ready to type.

It acts on the palette in place. ui.openPaletteBrowser() would pop the palette out into a floating window, so the hotkey deliberately leaves it uncalled: if the browser is closed, the hotkey does nothing and starts no rearranging of your workspace.

The tab step matters because the search field lives inside the stock palette list, and any contributed tab hides that list. The hotkey asks whichever palette-tab owner is installed to show TD's own tab again (PaletteRegistry and TDXLU's own injector are both feature-detected, neither required), then takes focus one frame later, because a tab switched back this frame is still hidden.

Rebindable. The combo lives on this package's own Search Hotkey parameter, so it is listed under TDX_SearchPalette in HotkeyManager and can be changed there or on the parameter directly; Reset to Default restores ctrl+shift+f. It used to live in MY_HOTKEYS; keeping it with the tool that owns the field means uninstalling this package takes its hotkey with it.

Editing the search text #

The search field is a Text COMP, so it edits the way TouchDesigner's own text fields do, including ctrl+left / ctrl+right to jump by word. It replaced the legacy Field COMP, which TouchDesigner deprecated in 2022.24200 and which had no word navigation.

Search behavior #

Matching goes beyond the original module's prefix search:

• Substring, case-insensitive: blur finds hsvBlur, radialBlur and barrel_blur, as well as names that start with it.
• Multiple words AND together: audio an finds audioAnalysis.
• Ranked results: an exact match first, then names starting with the query, then names where it starts a word (blur puts hsvBlur and barrel_blur above unblurred), then the rest, alphabetical within each group.
• Wildcards still work: a word carrying * or ? is matched as a pattern, anchored at the front only, so a wildcard can only ever widen the search: audio* is still classic prefix search, *fee finds feedbackGen just like plain fee does, and web*ser finds webBrowser.
• Exclude with -: a word prefixed with a minus removes matches: blur -barrel finds every blur except the barrel_blur pair.
• Fuzzy fallback: when nothing matches literally, each word is re-read more loosely, best reading first: a spelling either side of the Atlantic (randomise finds randomize, colour finds color), initials (mfo finds movieFileOut), a typo of a word or its start (nosie finds noise, kinnect finds kinectAzure; one slip for words of four to seven letters, two from eight), and last a subsequence, so fbg finds feedbackGen and wbrsr finds webBrowser. These only ever appear when the strict search came up empty, and they never reorder it.
• Folder search: a word containing / matches the palette folder instead of the name: gen/ noise finds noise in the Generators folder, and tools/ alone lists a whole folder. Toggleable via the Folder Search parameter.
• Latest version only: numbered copies of one component (tool, tool1, tool2, or the same name in two folders) collapse to the latest-modified file. Toggleable via the Latest Version Only parameter.

The list stops at 200 rows, so a one-character query returns the 200 best-ranked components only.

Clicking a folder in the tree clears the search, so the list falls back to that folder's own contents and the old query goes with it. The X button next to the field still clears it without changing folder.